I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

by Crystal Zevon

  December 2, 1987

  …Couldn’t sleep again. Andy picked me up and we went to the Sports Arena to see last half of Pink Floyd. It was entertaining…Merle had called, so I returned her call, but I didn’t want to talk…I don’t know what I’m doing…Called Duncan to talk about my next record and discussed it with Andy.

  December 4, 1987

  …Meeting at Virgin—Jeff, Jordan & Andy. Disappointing sales, how we spent twice our budget, how they’d spent over a million—predictable stuff. I talked a little about making the next album with a computer, cheaply. Anyway, it seemed they’re going to pick up the option and I’m grateful to be employed. I’m not getting any money for signing, though…

  December 5, 1987

  …Went to AA birthday party. Saw Ray, pretty Annette…

  MERLE GINSBERG: I’d started this job at E!, and I realized the only way for me to reinvent my journalism career was to write about the movie business. I’d exhausted the whole music thing. So, I started having to go to screenings, and I wanted him to come with me. I thought, “He likes to go to movies. This will be cool.”

  He never wanted to go out in public. He felt like people were staring at him. He hated most movies. I started dragging him a little bit because he was utterly miserable. I took him to a Christmas party that Movietime gave. Everybody was like, “That’s Warren Zevon, the rock star. That’s Merle’s boyfriend.” He was totally miserable being at this party with me.

  December 6, 1987

  …Stopped by A&M and saw Don Everly in the hall. We shook hands, then hugged, and he took me into “A” to see Phil. It was wonderful. I picked Merle up and we had dinner at La Scala. Hysterical message from Crystal. It wasn’t directed at me or about me. Called Stephan and Mike and they advised me not to try 12 Stepping Crystal.

  Warren and Merle Ginsberg.

  December 20, 1987

  …Went to Crystal’s with presents. My Dad was already there. Jordan, LeRoy, Jimmy and Jackson came. Dad was talkative and quite friendly. Ariel seemed to love the Casio piano. She made a wish bracelet for me and Crystal gave me a coffee maker. It was a nice time.

  December 30, 1987

  …Looking through computer book got a song idea, “Networking.”

  Based on sales figures, Warren’s fan base seemed to be dwindling. However, there was one fan who remained ever true…David Letterman. When Warren received an invitation to appear on Letterman’s sixth anniversary show as a part of an all-star band, he was honored. The fact that the show was to take place on his birthday felt like a sign of good fortune.

  PAUL SHAFFER: I put together what we used to call a Super Band—many of the people who had performed with my band throughout the first ten years. I had three keyboards that night. I had Billy Joel on Hammond organ, Carole King on the synthesizer, and Warren Zevon on a nine-foot grand piano.

  I introduced each musician on the show, and it was Warren’s birthday, the day we taped. I’d say, “Happy Birthday to the Excitable Birthday Boy,” and I remember he made a gesture with his hand, holding his hands up to the camera and then flipping them over and showing the backs of his hands. After the show, I said, “That was so interesting, what you did when I introduced you. What did you mean by that?” He said, “Well, I feel so silly. I don’t think of myself as a pianist. I’m kind of a singer/songwriter, maybe guitarist, and here I was at a nine-foot Steinway grand with Carole King and Billy Joel, and I thought it was so silly that I was kind of showing my golden hands.” As if to say, “What am I doing here?” So, that’s the humility. He had real humility, but he was just a terrific rock and roll pianist, and I bet he had been a terrific classical pianist. I’m sure he was.

  January 23, 1988

  …We all met at Radio City for a run-through. First thing I saw in the chart of the Late Night Theme was a G13! David Letterman came up to me on the bandstand and said, “For my money, you’re the best one…” He told me he’d been to the Beacon and had bought “A Quiet Normal Life.” Billy Joel and I went to a seafood restaurant by S.I.R.—bad food, good conversation. Rehearsal went on until midnight. I’m pretty lost in the complicated horn oriented charts. Carole King’s sweet, Duane Eddy’s aged well and is very warm (we worked together about 16 years ago on Phil Everly’s first solo album)…I eventually met most everyone. Robert Cray’s a great guy…

  January 24, 1988

  …Went to sleep about 2 a.m. Woke at 4 a.m. That was it—so I was beyond exhaustion. Espresso for both shows. Joe Walsh and I went out in the limo shortly after 9:00, off to Radio City. After the morning run through, I got back for a short nap. The shows were fun. It was strange sitting around on stage for 3 hours in front of 5,000 people with nothing to do most of the time. Got a nice inscription from Cyndi Lauper for Ariel. Andy sprang a birthday cake between shows and he, Billy Joel, Joe Walsh, Ben E. King sang “Happy Birthday.” It was a great way to spend my birthday.

  After Letterman, Warren embarked on a successful European tour. When he got home, he immersed himself in finishing the songs for the cyberspace computer-generated album he and Duncan were going to produce.

  MERLE GINSBERG: It seems to me that once Warren sobered up, he had each girlfriend for about two years. He was not a guy who was going to have a long-term relationship with anybody. He needed a new kick, and that had to be it.

  March 19, 1988

  …Two years sober…

  March 25, 1988

  …Merle and I haven’t spoken since Sunday night—I decided to call her. Right after I did, Stefan [AA sponsor] called and we talked about the relationship at length. I opened up—a lot of feelings are coming up, but as of tonight I don’t know what I want to do. At his suggestion, I read Step Eleven in the 12 and 12 before Merle came over. We talked for a long time…

  MERLE GINSBERG: The breakup was ugly. I knew how cold Warren could be to people he wanted to cut out of his life. He had this dark inclination to hurt people who cared about him, and who he cared about. Our fight started one Sunday morning when he was asleep. I had made a new friend and she wanted to go shopping. I wrote Warren a note. The whole time I was gone, I was shaking. I felt like I was off having a tryst with somebody.

  I called him about two and he said, “Where the hell are you?” I said, “I’m having brunch.” He said, “Get back right now. We have to go shopping.” I said, “I’m out with my friend and I’ll be home when I get home.” By the time I got there, he was furious, but he was waiting for me. We went to the grocery store, but he would not speak to me. The next day, I went to work, and I went back to my apartment.

  I was in my own apartment thinking he’d get over it and be fine like he always was. He called me and said, “I need to talk to you.” I said, “Oh, honey, I missed you. I’m so glad you called.” He said, “Come over tonight.” So, I go over there, and he was stone-cold icy sober. He said, “This is not working for me. You’re working all these hours. You’re not there for me. I think we should take a break.”

  I didn’t understand this breakup because, even though we did fight a lot, I still loved him and I really believed he loved me. The conversation was very short. He said, “My sponsor says I’ve been drunk and married, drunk and alone, and sober and with you, but I’ve never been sober and alone, and I think it would be a good thing for me to be sober and alone for a while.”

  I honestly thought that made sense. In fact, I missed having friends and having a life, so I said, “Why don’t we have a month trial where we each go off and do our thing. We left that conversation with two very different views of what was going on. I thought we were going on a temporary hiatus, but he thought that we were breaking up.

  March 26, 1988

  …Emotionally exhausted. Took the top off the Corvette and drove to Santa Monica to a birthday party for Ray, Annette & others. Home, checked my machine. Angry call from Crystal. Ariel doesn’t want to see me, Crystal’s tired of defending me. I got very angry, very upset…Jordan was incredibly supportive and loving. I called Crystal when I got
home, apologized, told her my feelings…

  March 27, 1988

  …Went by Stefan’s for the Al-Ateen book, then to Ariel’s. I talked about my feelings—told her it was so difficult for me to think of things to do, and to make conversation, that I got nervous—I asked her to help. I told her it was no big deal, she didn’t have to go out with me on a certain day and time—that I’d be around. She said she didn’t want to go out—we played Nintendo for hours and I enjoyed it completely! She talked, we looked at her baby pictures, she gave me a print out of her latest story. I had a wonderful time with her.

  March 30, 1988

  …Woke up with a headache. Talked to Merle. She came by for her things about 6:30. We barely spoke—she started to cry when she was leaving—it was very sad…Kim was on “The Hitchhiker” on HBO…I went to the Troubador to see Jordan’s band—they’ve gotten much tighter—it was nice. I made avocado sandwiches.

  April 6, 1988

  …Went to the gym. Went to a meeting. When I got home there was a message from Merle, so I called her. I think I was fairly clear—I said I’d never been single, I’d never been on a date in my life—maybe I should try it…I said we were warned & cautioned against relationships in the first year of sobriety, and maybe these were the repercussions—when the relationship started coming apart, I didn’t know who I was. It was all calm and pretty nice.

  April 7, 1988

  …Ray called…We had lunch at The Rose Café. I was talking about asking Annette out—he gave me her number and said I should call her. When I got home a kind of attractive neighbor I’d noticed had a lot of groceries at the elevator, so I helped her with them and she offered me a coke. Slightly emboldened by this, I called Annette’s number & left her a message. She called back about 15 minutes later—I asked her out. We’re going out next Thursday night (her family in town this weekend). Very excited.

  ANNETTE AGUILAR RAMOS, girlfriend: I had seen Warren at a couple twelve-step meetings and thought he was rather attractive. We had a common friend named Big Ray and I asked him, “Who’s that guy?” He said, “That’s Warren.” I had no clue who he was, and the few times I did speak to him, he seemed aloof and detached, so I thought Ray must have been imagining things when he said, “I think Warren likes you.” I said, “Well, he never talks to me when I talk to him.”

  Then, we ran into each other at a Christmas party, and the next day I came home from work and there was a message from Warren on my answering machine saying, “Hello, this is Warren Zevon. I’m not going to ask you out on your answering machine, so you’re going to have to call me back so I can ask you out.” I thought that was the funniest thing because here was this guy who embodied the reclusive rock star. When he was onstage, he was so electric and out there, but in his personal life, he was quiet. He had this sense of boundaries that was really good, I thought.

  He did ask me out and I said yes. He asked if I would like to hear some of his music. I said since I had never heard his music, that would be lovely. Our first dinner was at the Ivy, which was impressive. It was a threefold date. He took me out to dinner and then took me back to his apartment and played me some of his songs, and I was like “wow.” Then, he took me to see Bruce Springsteen in concert, the tail end of the concert. One of my favorite memories is sitting backstage with Bruce, in a bathrobe, and Warren, who had just serenaded me, and them talking about the old days and being struggling musicians. Bruce went on and on, and there were humorous stories. Bruce showed such a love and friendship for Warren that it really impressed me, especially the stories of them growing up together as musicians. On the way home Warren’s like, “Do you want to go steady?” I’m like, “Heck, yeah!”

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Over the years, I tended to not see him for long periods, then run into him and spend a night here or spend a night there. He was always a character who was a bit disquieting to be around because it was hard to tell when he was joking. His sensibility and his ability to observe could be disquieting. You knew he was seeing everything that was going on around you when you were with him. He was interesting because he was very sweet of heart on one hand, and then he had this very tough nature, tough part of his personality, on the other. But, I always enjoyed the time I spent with him. I always came back with a smile on my face, laughing, going, “Whoa, Warren, whoa.”

  NINE

  DOWN IN THE MALL

  There’s a brand new shopping center seven stories high

  There’s bound to be a sale or two—something we can buy

  There’s four floors of parking and we’re sure to find a space

  We’ll spend all the money that the government doesn’t take

  DUNCAN ALDRICH: On Transverse City, Warren was given more producer rein. It was Warren, Slater, and me. I was trying to make the thing as good as possible and keep it in a budget, which I was. Then, Slater would come along and hire all these people, and he ended up not paying me for a bunch of it, and that ended up ripping the seam between Warren and myself, even though I know he had nothing to do with it. He’d say, “I can’t control this shit.”

  But, we had a good time doing that. We worked on it over a year’s time.

  JORGE CALDERON: At the end of the ’80s, Warren was obsessed with cyberpunk music. He showed up at my house one day, and I had the chicken pox…He gives me a copy of New Cyber Punk magazine and says he wants me to get into the theme of his next album. It’s a big deal when you get the chicken pox at forty, so maybe I didn’t act excited enough or something, but I didn’t have anything to do with Transverse City. He never called me back. I played bass, but I didn’t write any of the songs.

  MICHAEL IRONSIDE: Warren called me up one day, and he was doing that kind of overly produced, very electronic album. There was one song about pollutants and chemicals and stuff. I went into the studio one night and just read the list of chemicals in the background when they were mixing it. It was the Transverse City album. I only listened to it once, and I just didn’t get it. I thought it was very overproduced, and it’s a lot like a film where it gets so overproduced that what it’s about gets lost.

  I thought since I had such an organic relationship with Warren, we could call each other up and piss in each other’s ears, tell the truth to each other. So he said to me, “What’d you think of the album?” And, I said, “Oh, yeah, it’s not my taste. It kind of left me aback after I heard it.” He said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “I felt like I got pushed away from your music, rather than pulled in.” And I thought it was safe to say all this, but he just went, “Really.” And he didn’t really say anything, just kind of went away. But, after that, he didn’t return my phone calls for over a year.

  Then, I was going down Crescent Heights one day and traffic was bad, and there was this guy trying to pull out into the traffic, so I waved him in. He turned around to say thank you, and it was Warren. He looked like he’d been shot in the ass because he saw it was me and you could hear that “Aw, fuck.” But, he waved me over onto a side street and we pulled over and he says, “I owe you an amends.” I said, “What for?” He says, “I haven’t called you. My feelings got hurt. I didn’t know how to take that talk about my album, and my feelings got hurt.” I said, “I’m sorry you took it that way.” He said, “Yeah, well, you may have been right.” And, it got us back together. I still don’t know whether it’s my fault or whether it’s part of Warren’s creativity, the way he synthesized the world, his sensitivity…I do know it’s all part of what came out of him and what he gave us all.

  MERLE GINSBERG: The songs he wrote about me happened after the breakup. There was a song called “The Queen of Downtown.” I used to tell him that I’d been a really big deal in New York and that I’d written a column for The Soho Weekly News in New York, and I told him how I’d wear all these funky clothes and go out to clubs every night and I was the “queen of downtown.”

  The album Transverse City is all about me. The way I know is that after we broke up, I was in contact with Ava, his maid, and s
he would tell me about the songs he was writing and the things he would say about me. It’s funny because he would never talk to me after we broke up. We didn’t speak and the only way I ever knew about any of his feelings was by listening to those songs, which was a really weird way to hear it.

  May 9, 1988

  …Ava came to clean. I showed her Annette’s picture…she said, “Very pretty.”

  ANNETTE AGUILAR RAMOS: He called me his Pollyanna because I saw the bright side of things. He would laugh. He had laughter that would fill the entire space—whether it was that boisterous ah-ha-ha evil laugh, or just a chuckle over something. I loved massaging his hands because he had that wash-his-hands-one-hundred-times-a-day syndrome. His hands would bleed and crack, so I would massage them with good moisturizer at night. He loved his head being scratched. He was very affectionate and cuddly.

  May 10, 1988

  …Dreamed about working on the bridge of “Long Arm of the Law”…Nerve wracking afternoon with a low-money call from Bill Harper, and Crystal telling me Merle & Beth had been invited to Ariel’s show. Crystal was sorry. Should she ask them not to come? Duncan and I worked on the record until midnight.

  ANNETTE AGUILAR RAMOS: I did ask him once how he came up with an idea, how he composed his music. He said he actually would dream in formula. He would dream a mathematical formula, except it was a musical formula. I asked him, “Do you hear music?” He said, “Not really. I see it written out in a formula.” Then, he would write it down and compose it on his computer. Then, he would work from that little piece and expand on it and compose it. I loved watching the process with him.